Thursday, September 01, 2011

Final Xterra Standings, Lory Race Photos, What Next?

I'm not sure how I've come to a point in my life where I find myself dressed in a skin tight lycra suit and sitting on a Slip-n-Slide but oh well. At this point I'm not sure which of my sports is weirdest.

The final rankings came out for Xterra and I ended up 7/18 in my age group in the Mountain Region. If I had done the Mountain Regionals in Beaver Creek and simply finished I would have come in 5th in the overall standings and qualified for Nationals without having to do any out of state races. Or if I had done one other race and come in 4th place or better I also would have qualified. Unfortunately qualifying and being good enough to go and be competitive are 2 different things and I'm a long way from there. Also qualifying wasn't a goal for this year so I only entered 2 races and you can count points from up to 4 races.

The big question though is do I try to qualify and be good enough to go for next year? I looked at the slowest and fastest of the competitive people who did the 2 races I did and I'd have to improve 1.9-2.8 mph on the bike for Lory, 2.5-3.6 mph on the bike for Indian Peaks (more technical, longer and at a high elevation). I'd have to improve 4:10-4:45 min./mile on the run for Lory, 4:56-5:31 for Indian Peaks. My swim times are competitive (faster at Lory) with the slower person but way off the fastest person. I'd have to go from 1:54 min/100 yards to 1:25 min/100 yards and that represents a lot of work for very little overall time gain. I know I can take a few minutes per mile off of my run because I'm so slow right now. I just didn't have a lot of time to build up my running after recovering from the hamstring strain this summer. But can I take off enough in a year to be competitve? Not sure about the bike speeds either. I can certainly get a bit better but how much hammering away can these old joints take? And is the type of training going to be fun and worth it?

I could shoot for the long course Xterra's instead. But is that training going to be even worse for injuries? Not sure I have the patience and desire any more to train for a race that takes 6 hours. I know I can do it but it's tedious and time consuming. Training to be faster/more competitive might be more fun and certainly a different challenge than I'm used to. I guess I've got plenty of time to decide, they haven't even announced date/location for next year's nationals let alone all the qualifying races. I hate the end of race season, I always wish there was more and start obsessing over next year.

Strum says, yeah, whatever

Maybe if you got yourself a big stick you wouldn't worry about such silly things as races

6 comments:

Gosh, your musings sound a lot like musings about going to the agility nationals! As we know well, qualifying and being competitive are two different things, and there's always something to work on but it might take a lot of work for a little gain etc etc. In other words, I can relate to your ponderings. :-) Sounds like you did pretty well overall this year.

The thing about Xterra Nationals though compared to agility nationals is that for the most part only really competitive people go so if I manage to qualify by choosing races without a lot of competition and not putting in the work to get competitive myself then I'll be out there racing by myself, way behind everybody and it won't be fun at all. The race is longer and harder than most regular races too. At agility nationals you have the fun of watching all the other really great teams doing the same course you do but in triathlon you're racing head to head so unless you're good enough to keep up with the pack there's little fun in it. Plus there is a regular 'citizens' race on the same exact course that anyone can enter so if all I wanted to do was experience the course and I wasn't competitive I could enter that and race with people of my ability. But I can do that all year long at half the cost.

I can make some good improvements in my biking and especially running with some hard work, it's only the swimming that won't produce much gain. It's more a question of what kind of work do I want to do? The kind of work to get faster or the kind of work to do longer course events?

I'll bet she did well, most people who go are pretty good. And for some of the age groups in some of the regions it's really hard to even qualify. My age group, 45-49, usually has one slot that goes to someone who's not all that competitive and that person doesn't typically go. It's possible the 2 people above me won't go and the slot will roll down to me but I wouldn't go this year even if I wasn't already going to DOCNA Champs. that weekend.